


The Art of War, For Dummies

by surgicalfocus



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Crossdressing, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Romance, Schoolgirl Kyungsoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:58:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4718612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surgicalfocus/pseuds/surgicalfocus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baekhyun, an ordinary high-school teacher, is sick of having to hide his relationship with Chanyeol, his famous rockstar boyfriend. Chanyeol reluctantly agrees to take Baekhyun out on a rare date in public, under the condition that he dresses as a woman to protect his identity. What follows is an unforeseen hostage situation orchestrated by an army of rabid fangirls, which the pair must use their wits to escape, and which gives Chanyeol the push he needs to finally show his love for Baekhyun to the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of War, For Dummies

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, Baek, but that waiter over there’s been ogling you ever since we got here,” Chanyeol muttered indignantly; he yanked his grey beanie down over his head to cover the tufts of flame-red hair that threatened to escape it, and glared at the waiter in question through his dark sunglasses. Glancing over at Baekhyun, he saw an infuriating smile slowly spread across his boyfriend’s face, but he otherwise held his tongue.  
  
Chanyeol directed his narrowed eyes at Baekhyun instead. “You're  _enjoying_  this aren't you, you little fiend..”  
  
Baekhyun lowered his own sunglasses – red plastic heart-shaped monstrosities, they were – and winked at Chanyeol over them. “Yeah,” he said, still smiling. “I kinda am… not gonna lie. It’s nice to have all eyes on me for once.”  
  
“There he goes again,” Chanyeol muttered, shaking his head in disapproval. “Have you not seen the way he keeps blatantly staring at your boobs whenever he walks past? Fucking hell… take a bloody picture, mate, they're not real anyway.”  
  
“Chanyeol, relax,” Baekhyun said gently. “You don't need to be more protective of me just because of what I’m wearing..”  
  
“I know, I know,” Chanyeol sighed. “I'm sorry.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. Now… what are you going to order?” Baekhyun asked, probably in a bid to distract Chanyeol from the pervy waiter’s roving eyeballs. Chanyeol grunted a curt “not sure” in reply; so far he hadn’t really paid much attention to his own menu. Up until then he’d been too busy scanning the pavement out the front of the non-descript little café they were sitting in, looking for signs of suspicious behaviour. He usually didn’t care so much about being harassed in public when he was alone – he was more than used to it by now – but trying to keep Baekhyun out of the spotlight was another thing altogether. Chanyeol didn’t want to share Baekhyun with the world, not just yet – he was happy to keep his boyfriend entirely to himself for the time being. And maybe he was only delaying the inevitable, in the end, but he was going to hold out as long as he damn well could.  
  
He wasn’t sure how he had let Baekhyun talk him into this in the first place. "Look... I know you're not ready to come out to the public yet," Baekhyun had said the night before, while they were lying together on an uncomfortable twin bed in some random overpriced hotel room. “And that's okay, I can understand that… so I'm willing to disguise myself as a woman to protect your fragile image. Bom said she'd help style me up and everything."  
  
"I just don't know, Baek,” Chanyeol sighed; he rolled over onto his back and stared up at the water stains on the ceiling. “I have more than my fair share of reservations about this."  
  
"You have every right to," Baekhyun said gently. He’d started teasingly tracing over the tattoos on Chanyeol's left bicep with his fingers, a trick he often pulled when he was trying to get his own way… and when this didn’t work he’d start stroking other places instead. "But all I really want is for us to be able to get out once in a while, and spend quality time together as a couple. All this sneaking around, being stuck inside, having clandestine meetings in hotels... sure, it was exciting at first, but it's hard on me too, you know. So... what do you say?"  
  
For his part, Chanyeol had thought it was a terrible idea... but Baekhyun could be astonishingly persuasive, particularly when he had no clothes on. At the time Chanyeol was still ensconced in that sleepy, contented post-nookie afterglow, and so his defenses were already weak enough as it was, but naked Baekhyun could have told him to walk Jesus-style across a shark-infested body of water, and he would probably have done it. Which was pretty much what Baekhyun was getting him to do now, at least in figurative terms.  
  
“Okay,” Chanyeol had agreed with a sigh, “we'll do it tomorrow. I'll take you out for Saturday brunch, somewhere nice and low-key, out in the 'burbs where we wouldn't usually go. Hopefully nothing goes wrong. And if anyone asks, your name is Joan.”  
  
Baekhyun frowned at the suggestion. “Why Joan..?”  
  
"After Joan Jett," Chanyeol purred sleepily, nuzzling into the crook of his boyfriend’s neck. "My number one female fantasy..." Baekhyun had punched him in the arm then, but only playfully, and the sexy reward that followed had been well worth the bruise.  
  
Chanyeol knew all too well that he and Baekhyun perhaps weren’t the most likely couple, but then that only served to keep things interesting… and no one could deny that they were in love. They'd first met in a bar several months ago, while Chanyeol was out on the town incognito, looking to have a quiet drink on his own and just let loose and get away from it all for a night. Baekhyun hadn't known who Chanyeol was at the time, even when he'd introduced himself, although he did vaguely recognise the name of his band… which was different, to say the least. It was unexpected, even, but maybe that was a vain thing to say, given that Chanyeol only played guitar for a popular indie rock group and was really only well-known within the country;  _Cherry Bombe_  was still a decent way off from being an international sensation filling stadiums across the globe. Anyway, in Chanyeol's eyes, Baekhyun being oblivious to his existence only made the already handsome history teacher (who seemed quiet and bookish at first, but could definitely get dirty on the dance floor with the best of them) all the more attractive. It was really nice to have someone who kept him grounded, who reminded him what living an ordinary life was like, and who had grown to love him for who he really was.  
  
Despite all the warnings Chanyeol had given him throughout their blossoming relationship, Baekhyun hadn't really known in the early days what he was signing up for... how could he? And now, as Chanyeol’s burgeoning popularity only seemed to be on the rise, he appeared to finally be realising the full extent of what he’d gotten himself into. Chanyeol couldn’t lie to himself and say this didn’t keep him up at night; losing Baekhyun was something he couldn’t bring himself to even think about.  
  
But so far, Chanyeol had to begrudgingly admit, Baekhyun had been justified in his (admittedly naïve) optimism – something had yet to go wrong during their pleasant little day out. It seemed like no one had even recognised Chanyeol yet, which was a miracle in itself; on a good day, he couldn’t even take his own garbage out without stumbling across evidence of it on the internet a few hours later.  
  
“You were right,” he said to Baekhyun, “this  _is_  nice. And yet, I still can’t fully relax, somehow…” Sighing, he picked up the neglected menu in front of him and began perusing it half-heartedly, seeing a list of words and some numbers next to them, but not really registering what he saw.  
  
“Don’t be such a worry-wart,” Baekhyun said, not looking up from his own menu. “Aren’t you glad to just be somewhere other than one of our houses for once?”  
  
“I guess so. I just wish there was a way to spend time together in public that didn’t require one of us to wear a dress.”  
  
“Well, just be glad the one wearing the dress isn’t you,” Baekhyun said flatly, forcing his pink glossed lips into a thin smile. “This thing is so tight I’m pretty sure it’s cutting off my circulation.”  
  
“Okay. Just bear in mind that this was  _your_  idea, not mine.”  
  
Baekhyun arched a heavily penciled eyebrow at Chanyeol and pursed his lips even more, but chose not to reply. He had borrowed the outfit he was wearing from Bom, Chanyeol’s bandmate and the vocalist for  _Cherry Bombe_. Bom had been very happy to help Baekhyun disguise himself for the occasion – perhaps a little  _too_  happy, if the amount of make-up she’d enthusiastically slathered on Baekhyun’s naturally pretty face was anything to go by. On second thoughts, Chanyeol decided, a skintight vinyl mini-dress with a boned corset and padded cups probably wasn’t the most appropriate get-up for a cozy, quirky little café nestled deep in the heart of suburbia… still, no one with functioning eyes could deny the fact that Baekhyun looked devastatingly sexy in it – Chanyeol least of all.   
  
Baekhyun flicked the curled tendrils of his platinum blonde wig over his bare shoulders (a tip from Bom to draw attention away from how broad they were) and lowered his sunglasses, peering at Chanyeol over the red plastic frames. “I think I’m going to go with the salmon bagel,” he announced, lowering the menu onto the table in front of him. “You?”  
  
Chanyeol realised he still hadn’t really looked properly at the menu himself. He peeled his eyes away from the café entrance (which he’d made sure to sit close to, just in case making a hasty getaway became necessary) and stabbed his index finger at the first thing he saw.  
  
“Steak sandwich,” he said, flipping the menu closed and sliding it into the middle of the table. “And a beer to calm my nerves. There, done.”  
  
Baekhyun signaled at a waiter (not Mr. Ogle-Eyes, thankfully) and placed their orders; when this was done he reached over and grabbed both of Chanyeol’s hands, smiling at him sweetly.  
  
“I’d just like to thank you again for agreeing to take me out today,” he said. “I know how nervous you were about it, and mark my words… I already have a little surprise in store for you when we get back to my house.”  
  
Chanyeol perked up a little at this news; he hadn’t been aware of any such surprise before, but from the way Baekhyun was winking at him right now, it could only be something good. Probably something sexy. The thought made the rest of the date pass by a little more bearably, but he still couldn’t shake that uncomfortable feeling in his gut that someone, somewhere, was keeping a watchful eye on them both.   
  
  
  
  


* * * * *

  
  
  
  
  
“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it..?” Baekhyun said cheerfully when they got back to his house a little later; he kicked Bom’s leopard-print platforms off next to the door and sashayed into the living room with Chanyeol in tow.  
  
“Yeah,” Chanyeol admitted, slouching behind Baekhyun with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “I guess it went pretty well..”  
  
“I told you, didn’t I? Now go ahead and make yourself comfortable,” Baekhyun instructed him, nodding towards the couch; he was doing that sexy lip-bite thing that always drove Chanyeol crazy. “I’m going to give you your little surprise now.”  
  
Chanyeol sat down and watched curiously in silent anticipation as Baekhyun fiddled with his iPod for a moment, apparently searching for a song, and then  _I Love Rock N’ Roll_  began to blast out of the speakers. He started swaying his hips to the beat, gently at first, and then he began dipping his body lower and lower, until the tiny dress he was wearing began to ride up right over his thighs, giving Chanyeol a tantalising glimpse of the satin and lace underneath.  
  
“Holy shit,” Chanyeol whispered, leaning back against the couch; he felt like he’d been pinned there by the sheer force of Baekhyun’s sexiness.   
  
“I take it you approve..?” Baekhyun asked; miming along with Joan Jett’s sultry voice, he slowly lowered himself to the floor, his hips rolling in time with the heavy guitar riffs playing in the background, and then raised himself up again, ass first with the rest of him following.  
  
“You are so very sexy in that dress,” Chanyeol said, licking his lips without thinking. “I mean, I was expecting you to look good as a lady, but not  _this_  good..”  
  
"I feel very sexy in it, too. It’s tight as hell, but I love how it rubs me in all the right places,” Baekhyun said with a cheeky smile; he was on his knees now with his arms raised over his head, body-rolling and pelvic-thrusting interchangeably. At last he got to his feet and turned his back towards Chanyeol, casting a flirtatious glance at him over his shoulder.   
  
“Wow. I think I’m actually jealous of that dress right now,” Chanyeol said jokingly; he patted his knees where they poked out through the fraying holes in his ripped jeans. “Come hop on me, babe… let me see you work those hips up close."  
  
"With pleasure,” Baekhyun replied, and he settled himself on Chanyeol's lap with his back still turned towards him, grinding up against him slowly. Chanyeol let his hands slide over Baekhyun's body from behind, pushing the skirt of the dress up over his hips, and began gently rubbing circles over his belly.  
  
“Nice knickers,” he murmured; he moved Baekhyun's blonde wig aside and trailed kisses over his exposed shoulders, savouring the sweet scent of his skin, clean and soapy with the faintest tang of sweat. As he did so, he listened intently for that telltale change in Baekhyun’s breathing, moving his hands to his chest to feel for those quickened little gasps for air… the ones that always told him how incredibly turned on Baekhyun was, without either of them needing to exchange a single word.  
  
"I couldn't wear boxers under this dress," Baekhyun sighed; he uttered a soft moan, completely at the mercy of Chanyeol's wandering hands. "It's…  _ah_... way too tight. I either had to wear panties or go commando.”  
  
“Mmm. Bommie taught you well.”  
  
Baekhyun turned his head back and Chanyeol kissed him, softly and slowly, their tongues sliding sensually together. “I already loved your lips before,” Chanyeol murmured between kisses, “but I think I love them even more when you’re wearing cherry lip-gloss.”  
  
Baekhyun smiled into the kiss. “Oh really..?”  
  
“Really. I want to suck them right off your face.”  
  
“Well, you can’t,” Baekhyun said, laughing huskily in that sexy way that always made Chanyeol feel something stir in the pit of his stomach, as well as somewhere a little further south. “I need my lips for eating. And making out. And yelling at you, amongst other things… things of a more erotic nature.”  
  
“Fair point,” Chanyeol replied, chuckling a little himself. “I will allow you to retain ownership of your delicious lips for the time being.”  
  
“How gracious of you…” Baekhyun said drily, although he was so breathless with arousal by then that the barb in his response went unnoticed. Chanyeol didn’t reply; he was too preoccupied with trailing his hands up and down over Baekhyun's hips, then moving them down to his thighs, and at last back up to his bottom, rubbing and squeezing the soft flesh until Baekhyun had all but collapsed against him, boneless and whimpering. “Chanyeol, please..” he whispered; the song had long since finished playing and the room was silent but for their heavy breathing, which Chanyeol was only too happy about, for he loved nothing more than hearing Baekhyun beg, seeing him come completely undone like he was right now… and he hadn’t even got him naked yet.  
  
“‘Please’, what..?” Chanyeol asked, teasing him in that way he knew Baekhyun hated, but also secretly enjoyed at the same time. He loved having so much power over Baekhyun’s body, getting him all excited and warmed up with his rough, practiced guitarist’s hands, then backing off, barely letting him come down from the high before he was at it all over again. Baekhyun always did the same thing whenever the roles were reversed, so Chanyeol figured his sweet revenge was justified. He loved to think of Baekhyun as being the most beautiful of instruments whenever he was aroused, smooth and curved and tightly strung, the warm flush of his skin vaguely reminiscent of Chanyeol’s prized cherry-coloured Les Paul. If he took his time, and got the fingerings just right, he could make Baekhyun sing even sweeter.  
  
"I feel like I'll come if you lay one more hand on me," Baekhyun said, still leaning limp and helpless against Chanyeol’s body; he reached backwards with one hand, curling his fingers up in his boyfriend’s bright red hair. "Mmm… but I need you to touch me,” he whispered, “so bad…"  
  
Chanyeol laughed softly into the curve of Baekhyun’s neck. “Well, I think I can help you with that.”   
  
“I… I really want to...” Baekhyun's eyes fluttered open and landed on the window in front of them. " _Fuck_...!"  
  
"Me too, baby," Chanyeol murmured softly; his lips were still pressed against Baekhyun's neck, his hands still roaming freely over his body. "Shall we go to bed, or do it right here..?"  
  
"No… I mean, I saw someone looking through the window!” Baekhyun said in a harsh whisper. “A girl…"  
  
Chanyeol stuck his head out from behind Baekhyun to see what he was on about. "Wait…  _what?_  Where..?"  
  
“She's gone now,” Baekhyun said quietly; his face had turned deathly pale, even beneath all that make-up. “But she was just staring right at us a moment ago.”  
  
“Perhaps we'd better shut those blinds, then,” Chanyeol suggested; Baekhyun immediately pushed one of his hands away from where it had been snaking sneakily upwards along his inner thigh.   
  
“Not now, Chanyeol.”  
  
"Aww, come on," Chanyeol groaned; he was so horny it was ridiculous. "You've got me all in the mood now."  
  
“Well, I'm sorry, but the mood's kinda been killed stone dead for me,” Baekhyun said flatly. He stood up and yanked the skirt of Bom’s dress back down in a bid to cover his bum.  
  
"Are you sure you saw someone? Shit... and I was seconds away from getting you naked, too,” Chanyeol mused, laughing a little at the thought. “Good thing I stopped when I did.."  
  
"I'm positive," Baekhyun said, gnawing absently at his bottom lip. He glanced back over his shoulder at the window, his brow furrowed with apparent anxiety. “Maybe we should have another look, just to be sure.”  
  
Their discussion was cut short by three loud, sharp knocks on the front door, followed by silence.  
  
“What the fuck..!?” Baekhyun hissed, “why is she knocking on my door..?”  
  
“It’s fine,” Chanyeol whispered back. He padded quietly over to the window, trying to keep his head down as much as possible considering what a relative giant he was, and pulled the blinds the rest of the way down, enshrouding the living room in instant darkness. “Be cool… we’ll just lay low for a while until she leaves.”  
  
“She knows we’re in here, Chanyeol. She was looking right into my eyes.”  
  
“So? She’ll get bored and leave eventually… probably just a wayward fangirl that followed us here,” Chanyeol replied; figuring Baekhyun could use a distraction (and so could he, who was he kidding), he pulled his boyfriend back down onto the floor beneath the window, where they wouldn’t be seen, and went back to kissing his neck. One of his hands slid stealthily beneath the hem of the black vinyl dress, his fingers dancing over Baekhyun’s bare leg, and Baekhyun let him do it for a while before finally swatting him away.  
  
“Please, Chanyeol,” he whined, “this is not the time for, well, you know.” He paused for a moment, lifting one of his hands to his ear. “Can you hear that?” he whispered. “I hear  _voices_  -- plural. There’s more than one of them out there.”  
  
“ _Chanyeol! Chanyeol, we know you’re in there!_ ” came the voice of a young girl through the door, making them both jump with fright.  
  
“Oh god… what should we do?” Chanyeol asked worriedly.   
  
“ _We followed you here, Chanyeol,_ ” the voice continued, menacing in its tone. “ _We saw her. Who is she, Chanyeol? We want to know who your ugly girlfriend is, and we want to know right now!_ ”  
  
“Hey! Don’t you call my girlfriend ugly..!” Chanyeol yelled back at the voice, and yelped when Baekhyun aimed a swift kick at his shin. “Shut up, you idiot,” he whispered harshly, clamping a hand over Chanyeol’s mouth to silence him.   
  
“But she insulted you..” Chanyeol mumbled against the hand, until Baekhyun pulled it away.  
  
“I don’t care,” Baekhyun said, holding his finger up to indicate his need for silence. “There’s something very familiar about that voice… I think I’ve heard it before. But where..?”  
  
Baekhyun slowly crept upwards a little, just enough to be able to see over the windowsill, and opened the blinds a fraction to peep through. His eyes widened and he turned away from the window again.  
  
“Oh god,” he groaned, sinking down on the floor next to Chanyeol. “It’s  _Kyungsoo_. What the hell is  _she_  doing here..?”  
  
“One of your students..?” Chanyeol asked.  
  
Baekhyun nodded. “She was in my eighth grade history class last year, yes.”  
  
“Fuck,” Chanyeol whispered. “The plot thickens..”  
  
Baekhyun turned back towards the window to have another look. “Yep, that’s her, alright,” he said quietly, “the one with the jet-black pigtails and the dead eyes… she’s got five or six friends with her, too. I swear the kid’s had it in for me ever since I failed a paper she wrote about torture methods used on prisoners of war. It was excellent… I mean, she  _really_  knew her stuff.”  
  
“Well, why fail her then?” Chanyeol asked, frowning.  
  
“Because the assigned paper was on the abandonment of polytheism in ancient Egypt during the reign of Akhenaten,” Baekhyun sighed. “She was completely off topic..”  
  
Chanyeol put his arms around his boyfriend’s shoulders and rubbed them gently, trying his best to comfort him. “Hey, don’t get too down about it, babe… you weren’t to know at the time that you were dealing with an eighth-grade mob boss.”  
  
Baekhyun let out another heavy sigh. “Thanks, I think… I just have to make sure she doesn’t recognise me. If she does, there’s our cover blown to smithereens..”  
  
“Do we have anything to bribe them with?” Chanyeol suggested. “Candy, perhaps..? I have no cash on me right now..”  
  
“These are teenagers, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun replied, shaking his head. “They’re hormonal, unpredictable creatures at the best of times. From what I’ve seen, they don’t give a shit about candy at that age, unless it’s the hard stuff, the really super-sour shit that makes your tongue bleed... hell, I once caught a pair of seventh-graders snorting sherbet behind the toilet block… but anyway, there’s clearly a reason why they’re here. And it obviously has something to do with you.”  
  
“I know,” Chanyeol piped up, “why don’t we pretend to have very loud sex until they get grossed out and leave?”  
  
“Because that’s a really,  _really_  bad idea,” Baekhyun said, rolling his eyes.  
  
Chanyeol pouted. “Well, can we have sex for real then..?”  
  
“ _No_ , Chanyeol… why would you even suggest that?”  
  
Chanyeol shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just… being held hostage is kind of boring. More boring than I thought it would be, given the circumstances..”  
  
They both sat in silence for some time, trying to think of something to do. There seemed to be a lull in the conversation that had been previously drifting in from outside, and Chanyeol turned to look at Baekhyun curiously.  
  
“I haven’t heard anything for a while,” he said. “I think maybe they finally left..”  
  
Having said this, he stood up in front of the window and opened the blinds, only to discover a group of faces huddled together on the other side, glaring up at him through the glass.  
  
“Shit,” he swore, promptly shutting the blinds and dropping back down to the floor again.  
  
“What now?” Baekhyun asked.  
  
Chanyeol glanced at him, his eyes wide with terror. “They saw me. All of them.”  
  
“Well, how many of them are there..?”  
  
“At least ten, now… maybe more.”  
  
Baekhyun narrowed his eyes for a moment, as though searching his memory for something, and then sniffed. “ _God,_ ” he said, wrinkling his nose. “What is that  _smell_ …?”  
  
Chanyeol inhaled deeply through his nose and regretted it instantly. “Ugh… it smells like something’s burning,” he replied, covering his nose and mouth with one hand. “And also like shit. It smells more like shit than burning, actually.”  
  
Baekhyun hurried over to the front door to look through the peephole. “Oh, come on...” he groaned, “the old ‘flaming bag of shit on the porch’ thing? Who even does that anymore..?”  
  
“Well, at least you know not to step on it… now come back in here and we’ll light some candles,” Chanyeol suggested. “It might help get rid of some of the stink.”  
  
"No thanks,” Baekhyun said, shaking his head. “Somehow I doubt that vanilla-musk and excrement are complementary aromas... we’ll just have to put up with it…”  
  
As soon as he said this, there came a succession of loud bangs from somewhere out the front of the house, like something made of metal being beaten out of shape; it was closely followed by the unmistakable popping of what could only be firecrackers.   
  
"What are they doing out there?" Baekhyun asked in a wavering voice. He seemed like he was afraid of the answer.  
  
Chanyeol opened the blinds a fraction and looked outside. "Right now? They're, uh, lighting firecrackers on your lawn. And festooning your rose bushes with pink toilet paper..."  
  
Baekhyun covered his eyes with both hands, pressing his fingers into the sockets, and groaned loudly. "Fucking hell…"  
  
With nothing else to do, Chanyeol began a running commentary on the events going on outside. "Also, two of them are battering your mailbox into oblivion with baseball bats. And there’s another one over there, next to my car…  _letting the air out of my tyres?!_ Fuck..!"  
  
Chanyeol promptly peeled himself away from the window, his normally plump lips pursed into non-existence. He rolled up the sleeves of his checked shirt to his elbows and began to make his way towards the front door in long, purposeful strides. "That’s it,” he said through gritted teeth, “I'm going out there. I'm gonna give them all a piece of my mind... and God help them when I do."  
  
"Chanyeol, I don't think that's a good idea..." Baekhyun warned him.  
  
“Come on, Baek,” Chanyeol said; he was standing in front of the door with one hand on the knob, ready to pull it open. “At the end of the day, it’s a bunch of teenage girls – what’re they gonna do? Not to worry… I shall defend your honour, and your castle."  
  
Having said this, Chanyeol opened the main door, and then the mesh security door in front of it, and bravely strolled beyond it into the great unknown. A few seconds later he was hurtling back inside again, with the runny innards of three eggs dripping down over his face.  
  
“Okay,” he said breathlessly, pulling the main door shut behind him. “So they can throw pretty good... I think I may have misjudged this whole situation.”  
  
“You and I both,” Baekhyun sighed; he handed Chanyeol a towel to wipe the egg off himself with. “I think we might need to turn to the outside world for help, Chanyeol. We’re severely outnumbered here.”  
  
“Fine,” Chanyeol said, nodding. “But I just want to say, I  _will_  be holding a grudge against fangirls everywhere for this… for a very, very long time. You mark my words, Baek… this is set in stone. I am taking these feelings to my grave. Also, there might be a few more of them now than when I last counted.”  
  
“How many..?”  
  
“About twenty, give or take,” Chanyeol replied, and he was cut off by a loud splatting sound coming from outside. Something was obviously being thrown at the window.  
  
"What the hell is that noise..?" Baekhyun whined, and Chanyeol went back to the window to take another look.  
  
"Um... it would appear that they are now throwing eggs at your house as well,” he said.  
  
Baekhyun’s face slowly went red, but he didn’t respond. He looked like he was about to explode.  
  
"I don’t know about you," Chanyeol said, still peering out the window, "but I could really go an omelette right now."  
  
  
  
  


* * * * *

  
  
  
  
After Chanyeol had made them both a cup of tea and a snack, Baekhyun looked a little better; he seemed a bit less on edge, with some of the colour gradually returning to his face.  
  
“Well, I’m really at a loss as to what we should do now,” Chanyeol said, cradling his empty mug in his hands. “Maybe we should just call the police and let them handle it...” They were both sitting on the sofa now; the television was on in the background with the volume down low, but neither of them paid any attention to it. It just made them both feel less isolated, somehow, to have it on.   
  
“And tell them what,” Baekhyun said flatly, “that a gang of teenage girls is holding us hostage? That’ll go down well, I’m sure.”  
  
“Well, all we can do is try,” Chanyeol pointed out; he dialed the number for emergency on his mobile phone and held it up to his ear, waiting to be put through to the police department.  
  
“Yes, hello,” he said politely when someone answered, “I’d like to report a, uh, situation. Not life-threatening, so far… although we fear that this may possibly change.”  
  
“Alright, where are you currently located, sir?” the operator on the other end asked; Chanyeol noticed that he sounded rather bored.  _Just wait ‘til you get a load of my problems then, buddy,_  he thought. He gave the man Baekhyun’s address and phone number, and received a quiet grunt in reply.  
  
“Mmm-kay. Please give me your full name, and then describe the situation for me, sir.”  
  
“Okay,” Chanyeol said, nodding vigorously, and then stopped when he remembered he was talking on the phone. “Well, firstly, my name is Park Chanyeol—”  
  
“Wait a second,” the man interrupted him. “Park Chanyeol, as in  _the_  Park Chanyeol..?”  
  
“Uh, yeah,” Chanyeol replied, “that’s me…”  
  
“No way,” the operator laughed; he had a loud, honking laugh like a territorial goose. “Go on… pull the other one, then.”  
  
“I’m deadly serious,” Chanyeol said, trying to hide the growing irritation in his voice. “I really  _am_  Park Chanyeol. I’m with my partner inside his house, and right now we are surrounded on all sides by a twenty-strong mob of crazy teenage fangirls. In fact, there might be even more of them now… all of them armed and dangerous.”  
  
“Right,” the operator said wryly, and he made a loud slurping noise through the phone, as though he were drinking coffee or some other beverage. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me they’ve been terrorising you with plastic fairy wands and silly string, next..”  
  
“Well, so far it’s been a few hundred raw eggs, a bunch of toilet paper and one flaming bag of shit,” Chanyeol told him. “I’m not sure what else they have in their arsenal, though. I’m not really looking forward to finding out.”  
  
The operator sounded annoyed now. “Sir, you do realise that prank-calling emergency is an offense, don’t you..?”  
  
“This is not a prank call!” Chanyeol said exasperatedly, “this is really happening!” But before he could get another word in, the line went dead, and with a heavy sigh he slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Well, there goes that, then.”  
  
“I told you they wouldn’t believe you,” Baekhyun muttered in that irritating ‘I told you so’ voice, the one that always got on Chanyeol’s nerves; he rolled his eyes skyward, but only when he was sure Baekhyun wasn’t looking.  
  
  
  


* * * * *

  
  
  
  
With nothing to do but wait out their sentence, the hours crawled by like ants over a corpse. Chanyeol could see through the gaps in the blinds – their one and only glimpse of freedom, as pathetic as it was – that the sun was already beginning to set. He glanced at his watch and frowned.   
  
"It's already evening," he said with a sigh. "Don't these little hellions have homes to go to..?"  
  
"Apparently not,” Baekhyun replied listlessly. He was still wearing Bom’s outfit, the blonde wig just barely clinging to his head for dear life. Occasionally he rubbed his bloodshot eyes, smudging black make-up all over his face. He looked oddly cute, Chanyeol thought, like a rock n’ roll panda of sorts, but he kept this observation to himself. Somehow he didn’t think it would go down well.  
  
“So,” Baekhyun said after a moment’s silence. “What’s the update on our situation, then?”  
  
Chanyeol walked over to the window to peek through the blinds. “I don’t think you want to know,” he replied.  
  
“What is it?” Baekhyun insisted. “Tell me.”  
  
Chanyeol turned around to look at him, his face screwed up in a grimace. “Well, if you  _really_  want to know… your front lawn is now a campsite. They’re all pitching tents.”  
  
Baekhyun just shook his head in a defeated way, as though such an answer wasn’t even news to him anymore. "Right. Okay. So how many are there now..?"  
  
"To be fair, I don't think I can even count high enough to tell you,” Chanyeol said, looking out the window again. “But there's at least twice as many girls running around now as there were before. I mean, what’s going on? Has no one else even noticed that this is happening..?”  
  
"That's what happens when you live in a quiet neighbourhood, I guess," Baekhyun said with a sigh. "Everyone minds their own bloody business.."  
  
"I guess we'll have to get ourselves out of this, somehow,” Chanyeol said quietly. How they would do that was the part he wasn’t clear on, but they had time to figure it out… it was clear by now that they were going nowhere for a while.  
  
Baekhyun let out a weird little laugh in response; he looked as though he’d finally cracked. “You know, I’m not the kind of person that gets into this shit, Chanyeol... I’m just a lowly history teacher. Weird stuff like this doesn’t happen to me.”  
  
Chanyeol looked at him blankly for a moment. “Are you saying in a roundabout way that this is  _my_  fault?”  
  
“Well, it didn’t go over your head this time, which is surprising,” Baekhyun muttered under his breath.  
  
“Hey – don’t you pin this on me,” Chanyeol snapped, pointing an accusing finger at Baekhyun. “Going out in public together was _your_  idea.”  
  
“Look. If we want to get rid of them, we’re going to have to use our brains,” Baekhyun said wearily. “If I may quote, ‘the supreme art of war’, Chanyeol, ‘is to subdue the enemy with no battle’.”  
  
“Nice,” Chanyeol scoffed, “you read that on the wall of a public toilet or something?”  
  
“No,” Baekhyun replied, shaking his head. “It's from  _The Art Of War_  by Sun Tzu. He was a high-ranking military general in his day, so I’m sure he knew what he was talking about.”  
  
“I'm not sure I understand the significance, or indeed the relevance, of all your history-teacher talk, Baek,” Chanyeol sighed, and Baekhyun looked at him in silence for a while before he responded. Chanyeol could see in his eyes that he was thinking, chewing something over in that brilliant little mind of his.  
  
“The best thing about studying history, Chanyeol,” he said eventually, “is that it teaches you a lot about how people think, and why they do what they do. Anyway, obviously, resorting to physical violence is not an option here… and even if it was, there’s like fifty of them and only two of us. So what I’m saying is, with no other resources at our disposal, we'll have to rely on our wits alone to get us out of this mess.”  
  
Chanyeol stared at his boyfriend blankly. “…So we're doomed, in other words.”  
  
Baekhyun sighed; he had to laugh, in spite of himself. “Yeah. Probably...”  
  
"Look... I’d hate to get in a panic when tensions are already high, but it's starting to dawn on me that they really  _could_  be here all night – maybe even longer,” Chanyeol said worriedly. “I mean, I have band practise at midday for tomorrow night's gig... we really have to get them out of here tonight, if possible."  
  
Baekhyun shrugged. "Maybe we should just be direct, and ask them straight up what they want from us. Who knows, maybe they're more reasonable than they look."  
  
“Alright,” Chanyeol said, slowly getting to his feet. “I have no better ideas right now, anyway.” He walked over to the front door with Baekhyun following closely behind him, and yanked it open, leaving the security door shut for safety’s sake.  
  
"I come in peace," he yelled out, standing in front of the screen with his arms outstretched. At the sound of his voice, some of the girls began to emerge from their tents; they all stood around on Baekhyun’s front lawn, looking at Chanyeol expectantly. The crowd parted like the Red Sea when Kyungsoo came forward, each girl moving aside in turn to get out of her way; she came to a halt just shy of the front steps leading up to Baekhyun’s door and stood there with her arms crossed, her big eyes narrowed in an expression of defiance.  
  
"Of course you come in peace… you’re unarmed," Baekhyun muttered. “ _They're_  the ones with weapons.."  
  
"Baek, please," Chanyeol whispered aside to his boyfriend. He turned his attention back to the army of girls congregated on the lawn. "All we want to know is why you're here, and what you want from us: surely there's some way we can resolve this situation peacefully, with no further damage to my partner’s property. Anyway, it's nearly 8 PM… aren't your parents all wondering where you are?"  
  
"It's called an alibi, Park," Kyungsoo drawled obnoxiously. She made quotation marks with her fingers. "We're all 'sleeping over at each other's houses'."  
  
Chanyeol glanced over at Baekhyun, who was standing out of sight beside him. "She's good,” he said, “I'd have never thought of that. If I ever need to have a rival artist professionally whacked, I guess I'll know who to call."  
  
"Chanyeol, please," Baekhyun sighed, "this isn't the time for jokes."  
  
“Who said I was joking..?”  
  
Baekhyun jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow, and Chanyeol turned back to face their captors once more.  
  
“Okay,” he announced, “I have conferred with my better half, and we would like to call a truce. Or make a deal… or whatever.”  
  
“Fine, then,” Kyungsoo said, nodding. “Make us an offer, and we’ll retreat.”  
  
Chanyeol looked at her nervously. “Um… what do you want, exactly..?”  
  
Kyungsoo looked around for a moment and whispered something to several of the girls surrounding her. “We want you to dump your girlfriend,” she said to Chanyeol after a minute or two, “and then you can go out with us instead.”  
  
Chanyeol blinked at Kyungsoo, bewildered by the request. “What,  _all_  of you..?”  
  
Kyungsoo shrugged. “We’re fine with sharing… we can take turns on a week-by-week basis. I’ll have my secretary draw up a timetable.”  
  
“And if I refuse to go along with this...?” Chanyeol asked, chewing his lip anxiously.  
  
“Oh, you don’t want to do that, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo replied, grinning wickedly; her voice had become dangerously soft. “You _really_  don’t wanna know what we’re capable of.”  
  
Chanyeol stood there nodding for a moment, and then he promptly shut the door in Kyungsoo’s face.   
  
“That’s it,” he said, throwing his hands up in defeat. “I’m done. There is no reasoning with these people… they’re all crazy.”  
  
“What else is there to do?” Baekhyun asked. He was hunched over on the floor next to the front door, his knees drawn right up to his chest. He looked exhausted.  
  
Chanyeol sighed and sat down next to him. “This has gone on long enough,” he said. “I think it’s time to set them straight, and put an end to this once and for all.”  
  
“But how..?” Baekhyun asked, in a voice so tiny and quiet that it broke Chanyeol’s heart a little; he took Baekhyun’s hands in his own and kissed them, rubbing them gently to warm them up.  
  
"I think I'm going to bite the bullet, and introduce you to them formally," he said quietly. "And then I'll ask them from the bottom of my heart to respect our rights and needs as humans, and leave the two of us in peace. I mean, you were right, Baek… why should we have to keep hiding who we are? Whatever they throw at me, I can deal with it. My real fans will always have my back anyway. But I don’t want to force you out into the public eye without your full consent, so I need you to think about it first."  
  
“Well, alright,” Baekhyun sighed, “I’m willing to give it a shot, if you really think it'll accomplish anything.”  
  
Chanyeol smiled and leaned over, pressing a tender kiss to the side of his boyfriend’s head. “Maybe it will, maybe it won’t… but hey. We can only try, right?” He held up his hand, prompting Baekhyun to give him a high-five. “Go Team Chanbaek.”  
  
“Excuse me… our couple name is  _Baekyeol_ , I’ll have you know,” Baekhyun said, glaring at Chanyeol, but then he smiled anyway, biting his lower lip cutely. “Kiss for good luck..?”  
  
Chanyeol obliged, pulling Baekhyun closer to him and kissing him softly on the lips. “Whatever happens, I love you, okay?” he whispered, both of his hands on Baekhyun’s shoulders, looking deep into his eyes without blinking. “I love you, and I'm proud of you. To hell with everyone else.”  
  
“I love you too,” Baekhyun whispered, kissing Chanyeol again. “Now let's go throw ourselves to the dogs.”  
  
Chanyeol shook his head. “No… not dressed like that,” he said. “Go to your room and put on something else. I want them to see you, the man I love, as you really are."  
  
Baekhyun bit his lip and nodded. “Okay… if you’re sure…” he said hesitantly, and he gave Chanyeol one more kiss and a shy little smile before getting up and padding off to his bedroom to change. When he came back again a few minutes later, he was dressed simply and casually in faded blue jeans and a grey t-shirt; he’d removed all his make-up, and his hair was slightly messed up in that effortlessly sexy way that Chanyeol loved best. Chanyeol couldn’t help grinning when he saw him, his heart swelling with love and pride inside his chest; to him Baekhyun was always beautiful, but he’d never seen him looking quite as beautiful as he did in that moment.  
  
“Okay,” he whispered, “let’s do it.” Taking Baekhyun’s hand, he opened the front door of the house and ventured outside on to the porch, making sure to give the remains of the burnt shit-bag a wide berth. The group of girls gathered on the lawn immediately stopped their chattering and looked up at them both in silence, prompting Kyungsoo to slowly turn around and see what was going on for herself.  
  
“Oh my god…  _Mr. Byun_..?” she said, staring up at Baekhyun with confusion, her formerly menacing eyes now as big and wide as two saucers. Baekhyun smiled shyly and gave her an awkward little wave.  
  
“Um… hi Kyungsoo… long time no see.”  
  
“This is my boyfriend, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol said, putting one arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders and pulling him closer. “You heard right: he's a man, not a woman, and I love him very much. And even though I don't need your blessing to keep on loving him until the day I die, I'd like for you all to at least show us and our relationship the respect we deserve.”  
  
Chanyeol received no response to this; there was no sound at all except the wind whistling in the trees, and a dog barking somewhere a few blocks away.  
  
“Well?” he barked, raising an eyebrow at all the blank faces in front of him. “Do you think you can manage that?”  
  
Baekhyun squeezed Chanyeol’s hand and laughed softly beside him. “Wow,” he said, “I feel like I’ve just been out-teachered..”  
  
Chanyeol found he had to laugh too. “What do you think?” he asked, turning to face Baekhyun and grabbing both of his hands. “Shall we show them what's what?”  
  
Baekhyun nodded, and Chanyeol leaned down to give him a kiss, soft and open-mouthed and passionate, threading his fingers through the silky strands of his boyfriend's hair. It was one of those truly great kisses, the type that could liquefy Chanyeol's insides and bring him to his knees; he wasn't even sure how he was still standing at the end of it. When they finally pulled apart again, the silence surrounding them was no less deafening. If anything, maybe it was worse.  
  
Baekhyun leaned aside to whisper in Chanyeol's ear. “Did it work, do you think?”  
  
“Well, it succeeded in giving me half a boner,” Chanyeol whispered back. “Beyond that, I don’t know.”  
  
"They're being eerily quiet right now, Chanyeol. Shouldn’t we be worried..?"  
  
Chanyeol frowned, peering out at the sea of shocked faces, standing completely zombified on Baekhyun's lawn in front of him. "I’m not sure… perhaps we broke them,” he said, and then his eardrums were promptly punctured by a chorus of shrill girlish screams, all of them setting off at once in perfect synchronisation.  
  
"Why are they doing that..?!" Chanyeol yelled – he had to in order to make himself heard above the racket.  
  
"I don't know!" Baekhyun yelled back. He jammed his fingers into his ears to block out the noise. "Just make it stop..!"  
  
"Baek, I don’t think they’re screaming...” Chanyeol said after a moment’s pause. “I think they're  _cheering_.."  
  
And indeed they were… apart from the ashen-faced Kyungsoo, who looked as though she might be sick, all the other girls were jumping up and down on the grass, dancing in circles around each other amid excited squeals and shrieks of ‘I ship it, I ship it!’ Chanyeol had no idea what the hell ‘I ship it’ meant, but he hoped it was a good thing.  
  
“Should I even ask..?” Baekhyun began, but Chanyeol shook his head.  
  
“Don’t,” he said, smiling gently at his boyfriend. “Just go with it. Take it for what it is.”  
  
Baekhyun shrugged and smiled back at him. “Hey… always give the crowd what they want, right..?”  
  
Chanyeol laughed and pulled him closer so they could kiss again, braving the blinding onslaught of camera flashes together – none of which Chanyeol even registered with his eyes closed, and Baekhyun’s soft, warm lips moving against his own.  
  
  
  


* * * * *

  
  
  
  
Chanyeol woke up the next day to find Baekhyun sitting on the edge of his bed, already awake. He was still naked, his hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee; the early morning sunlight filtering in through the gap in the curtains dusted a light glow over his bare skin, and made his chestnut-brown hair shine like spun gold. The air in the room was still faintly imbued with the scent of sex, a souvenir from the night before, and Chanyeol inhaled deeply, breathing it in with relish. Sex and coffee were two of his favourite things in the world, and the smell of them mingled together was nothing if not irresistible… a very potent aphrodisiac. If he didn’t already have morning wood before, then he certainly had it now. Baekhyun turned to look at Chanyeol over his shoulder and smiled; there was a suggestive little twinkle of mischief in those bedroom eyes, as though he knew something that Chanyeol didn’t know.  
  
Chanyeol smiled shyly back at his boyfriend, his whole body tingling at the memory of last night’s lovemaking; of Baekhyun's sighs and moans, his soft kisses and curious hands, the love and lust in his eyes… all his whispered ' _I love you's_ ', which Chanyeol whispered back in every kiss, his hand gently cradling Baekhyun's head against the pillow like it was the most precious object on Earth. Somehow the spiritual connection between them had felt far stronger last night than it ever had. It had been the best sex they'd had in a while, which was saying something because sex with Baekhyun was always immensely enjoyable, in all its forms. But that slow and sensual, soul-baring, sharing-each-other's-every-breath kind of sex, the kind he only had when he was deeply in love, which he'd never shared with anyone else... that kind of sex was by far Chanyeol's favourite.  
  
He couldn't get that moment near the end out of his head… when Baekhyun had been almost sobbing from the pent-up emotion and the overstimulation, meeting every unhurried roll of Chanyeol’s hips with a corresponding squeeze of his legs wrapped tightly around his waist, bringing him closer, drawing him in deeper. He'd vowed his undying love for Chanyeol forever, just before succumbing to the shuddering paroxysms of extreme pleasure, the spasms of his body effectively sending Chanyeol right over the edge with him… he’d floated back down to Earth with Baekhyun’s name still on his lips, the taste of him in his mouth. Chanyeol was certain that particular memory would be indelibly burned into his brain until the day he died. He'd never had an orgasm quite like it; no one but Baekhyun had ever made him feel so good, and he could tell by that glassy-eyed look of love-struck satisfaction on Baekhyun's face that he felt the same way.  
  
Afterwards they'd lain in each other's arms, kissing for what felt like hours before making love again (Baekhyun was insatiable, it seemed, after being denied earlier in the day), and then they spent the rest of the night just talking… talking about what a day they'd had, reliving its terrors and its joys. Chanyeol remembered the new tears shining in Baekhyun's eyes when he'd told him how proud he was – proud of how he’d defused such an extraordinary situation, and how much the public declaration of love had meant to him, even though it was bound to change both of their lives forever… for better or for worse, time would only tell. But so far, Chanyeol had no regrets about doing it at all.  
  
"So… crisis averted, huh..?" he mused, breaking the peaceful silence at last.  
  
"Yeah... I suppose," Baekhyun said quietly, and turned his head back towards the window, lifting his cup to his mouth to take a sip. "Go team.."   
  
Chanyeol watched the movement in Baekhyun's throat as he swallowed, and caught a glimpse of a pink tongue running slowly over his lips, leaving them moist and glossy. It made his own throat feel suddenly dry.   
  
"Hey," he grunted, "where's mine..?"  
  
Baekhyun leaned over to reach for a second mug on the nightstand next to the bed, blessing Chanyeol's bleary, sleep-crusted eyes with a very welcome view of his glorious ass. He handed the mug to Chanyeol without a word and returned to sipping his own coffee, absently scrolling through something on his phone.  
  
"What are you looking at?” Chanyeol asked.  
  
"You know, it's been barely twelve hours since we came out as a couple, and already we have six fansites and eight twitter accounts dedicated to us,” Baekhyun said, the amusement clear in his voice. He rolled his eyes and laughed a little. “I guess your hardcore fangirls didn’t mind you having a love interest after all… they just didn’t want it to be another woman.”  
  
Chanyeol sat up upon hearing this news, leaning back to rest on his elbows. "We have  _fansites_..?"  
  
"Uh-huh. We even have an official couple name... and it's 'Baekyeol', I’m sorry to inform you,” Baekhyun said. He flashed Chanyeol a smug little grin.  
  
"'Baekyeol'?” Chanyeol pouted. “Why not 'Chanbaek'..?"  
  
Baekhyun laughed heartily and took another sip of his coffee. "Come on, Chanyeol... we all know I'm the pants of this outfit."  
  
"Mmm, yes," Chanyeol replied, smiling. "Even when you're wearing a dress, it seems."  
  
"Oh, shush," Baekhyun said, rolling his eyes, but he laughed anyway.  
  
"I did quite like you in the dress, you know. I mean, your shoulders are a little too broad for something with such a cinched-in waist… but it looked great on you."  
  
"Thanks for the fashion tip,” Baekhyun deadpanned. “Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it while you could, because I solemnly swear you will never see me dressed like that ever again.”  
  
"Hmm. Shame."  
  
Baekhyun let out a little grunt of acknowledgment and then was quiet for a while, too preoccupied with scrolling on his phone to speak. After a minute or two he suddenly burst into laughter.   
  
"Hey, look," he said, "I just found some fanfiction about us. Ooh la  _la_ , and this one's marked 'mature'.."  
  
"Gimme that," Chanyeol said quickly, yanking the phone out of Baekhyun's hands. His eyes darted back and forth over each paragraph until he got to the good part... then they gradually widened; he lowered the phone, feeling his face warming up in both embarrassment and indignation. " _Excuse_  me..!" he spluttered, "I’m no prude, but I have  _never_  done  _that..!_ "  
  
Baekhyun took the device back from him to see what he was talking about; he was quiet for a few minutes, engrossed in what he was reading, and then he laughed. "Wow. Is it bad that I think it's sick but kind of sexy at the same time..?"  
  
"Well, I think  _you're_  kind of sexy," Chanyeol said; he took the phone and the now empty coffee cup from Baekhyun’s hands and dumped them on the nightstand, then gently pushed his boyfriend down onto the bed, covering his face and neck with sloppy, enthusiastic kisses. "Kind of  _very_  sexy."  
  
"Oh really..?" Baekhyun asked, sounding breathless already; he wrapped his legs tightly around Chanyeol’s hips and began rubbing himself against him, his hands roaming in slow circles over his back. Chanyeol trailed his fingers over the smooth, sensitive skin of Baekhyun’s thigh, in teasing little touches as light as a feather, and caught the soft gasp that escaped his boyfriend’s lips with a perfectly-timed kiss.  
  
"Oh yes," he whispered into Baekhyun's mouth, "definitely. So how about we get it on right now, huh? We can get down and dirty... give those pervy fanfiction writers a run for their money. What do you say..?"  
  
"I’m up for that," Baekhyun said, grinning up at him. "But you might want to check that window first."

 

 

 

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End file.
